[zippyman55]

BS Physics and MS OR here. Loved both. I wish I took my OR classes way earlier. Just before I professionally retired I transitioned to a ML engineer job and knocked it out of the park. I was very well prepared w my skill set. In my opinion, too much of the data science field was getting dumbed down generating dashboards, etc. but the skill set was very valuable and I did advanced work. The OR community has a publication/society for analytics. Check out INFORMS. I’m not a fan of it as o think it misses the direction needed for ML. I think they are trying to refocus and address this. But the OR conferences are large. I actually like the decision science field better, moving up in management and making the right decisions and being able to articulate the reasoning was always important to me.